esire to handle, build,
operate or repair machinery. When, in later life, he became the owner of
an automobile, he was more than willing to leave all of the details of its
care to his chauffeur and mechanician.

As he cultivated his mental powers, he became more and more interested in
the use of his constructive aptitudes in the formation of ideas. He liked
to put ideas together; to work out the mechanics of expression in writing.
Instead of building machinery, he loved to build plots. Instead of
operating machinery, his abilities turned in the direction of working out
the technique of literary expression. Instead of repairing machinery he
loved rather to revise and rewrite his stories and plays. In other words,
the constructive talent, which he had shown as a child in material
mechanics, turned in the direction of mental and intellectual construction
as he grew older.

COMMERCIAL CONSTRUCTIVENESS

There are many boys who exhibit in their early years a great love of
machinery, and it is usually considered a kindness to them to prepare them
for either mechanics or engineering. In mechanical lines, they are
misfits, because they are frail and insufficient physically. In
engineering lines they are more at home, because the engineer works
principally with his brains. But very often they would still be more at
home in the realms of literature or oratory.

In a similar way boys often manifest great interest in machinery in their
youth, and afterward, if given the right opportunities, show their
constructive ability in the organization of business enterprises and the
successful devising of plans and schemes for pushing these enterprises to
success.

Sometimes those of this type of organization devote themselves rather to
invention and improvement than to the direct physical handling of
machinery. The following brief story of the struggles of Elias Howe[7]
should be an inspiration to every individual who fights physical frailty;
also, a lesson to him as to the way in which he should express his
mechanical ability:

[Footnote 7: From "Great Fortunes," by James D. McCabe. Published by
George Maclean.]

INTELLECTUAL TRIUMPH OF A FRAIL MAN

"Elias Howe was born in the town of Spencer, Massachusetts, in 1819. He
was one of eight children, and it was no small undertaking on the part of
his father to provide a maintenance for such a household. Mr. Howe, Sr.,
was a farmer and miller, and, as was the custom at that time in the